Bandages are one of the most widely utilized first aid supplies available. Bandages are typically used to decrease prolonged loss of body fluids by covering and protecting a multitude of skin transgressions such as open wounds, surgical incisions, venipuncture/IV insertions, post injection punctures, abrasions and burns. As such, in typical medical facilities, especially hospitals, bandages may be applied hundreds of times per day.
Unfortunately, however, the prior art method of applying a bandage to a target area often requires the use of two hands and is relatively time consuming, and thus, inefficient and costly. More specifically, when the need for a bandage arises, a nurse or doctor must first retrieve a bandage from a storage cabinet and/or storage room thereby requiring retrieval time and effort on behalf of the nurse or doctor. Then a bandage covering must be removed to expose the bandage. Next, typically two adhesive coverings must be removed to expose the adhesive portion of the bandage, wherein the bandage can then be secured over the target area. Because these steps are performed numerous times each day at numerous health facility locations by numerous nurses and doctors, many hours in any given day are consumed performing these simple yet necessary tasks.
In an attempt to remedy these inefficiencies, a multitude of bandage dispensers have been proposed. Examples of such devices may be found by reference to U.S. Pat. No. 5,511,689 to Frank; U.S. Pat. No. 5,499,740 to Huck et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,358,140 to Pellegrino; U.S. Pat. No. 5,271,522 to Ko et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,065,894 to Garland; U.S. Pat. No. 4,735,342 to Goldstein; U.S. Pat. No. 4,872,593 to Behringer; and U.S. Pat. No. 3,189,219 to Holzworth et al. However, in light of the present invention, these devices are disadvantageous. For instance, the patents to Holzworth et al., Huck et al., Pellegrino, Ko et al. and Goldstein all require that each bandage be pulled therefrom by hand and therefore, do not provide a means for advancing to the next bandage without physical contact with the previous bandage. Although the patents to Behringer, Garland and Frank provide a means for advancing to the next bandage without contact with the previous bandage, said means are inefficient. For instance, Frank and Behringer disclose devices that allow the bandages to be advanced via a rotating crank or knob. Not only can these advancement means interfere with other on-going procedures, they can easily be inadvertently rotated. Moreover, none of the above references can be easily attached to a person's clothing to provide an ambulatory bandage dispenser nor do they provide hand gripping means to facilitate one hand operations for larger wounds requiring more than one bandage.
It is therefore readily apparent that a new and improved device for dispensing bandages is needed that can be attached to a person's clothing and provide a simple advancing mechanism to allow push button advancement and thus one-handed operations. It is, therefore, to the provision of such an improvement that the present invention is directed.